Fact Vs. Fiction: The Truth About Skyfall's Weapons

The new James Bond movie, Skyfall, is refreshingly free of improbable high-tech hardware. Still, there was some impressive weaponry on display. Here's what is real and what is exaggerated about 007's latest toys and tech. (Check out our list of 23 of James Bond's most memorable gadgets, too!)

Twin Drum Pistol Magazine

Early in Skyfall, James Bond faces an assassin who's spitting a steady stream of bullets from a pistol fit with a unique magazine. It's two magazines, actually, stored in two circular drums that sit under the grip.

These are not the invention of a propmaster on set. Betaco sells 100-round twin-drum magazines for Glocks as well as for military assault rifles.These are called Century magazines, or C-Mags for short. Ammunition from both drums feeds into a single column, which then feeds the weapon.

The U.S. military has tested Betaco's magazines, which did well in a 2008 live fire testing at Fort Bliss, Texas. (At least, they did better than during a 2003 test, when they jammed frequently.) Still, twin-drum setups are not in widespread use in the U.S. military or any other. As for civilian use, some states have laws banning these high capacity magazines, but no federal ban exists. They cost a little more than $300 brand new.

Biometric Pistol Grip

Bond's Walther PPK is fit with a pistol grip that reads his palm print—if Bond isn't holding it, it won't fire. This comes in handy, as it were, in a mid-movie fight scene.

Such safeguards have been researched for years, because some see them as a way to merge public safety and gun ownership rights. But the NRA doesn't like the idea of such expensive safety devices being mandated by law, and the anti-gun crowd doesn't like things that could promote ownership and a false sense of security.

In any event, there are easier ways to give a handgun personalized safety. Palm prints are unique to individuals but often do not provide clear prints. That would be a bad trait for a firearm, especially in the hands of a spy who needs it to fire at a moment's notice. The New Jersey Institute of Technology, as part of a project funded in the early 2000s with $1.5 million from the state of New Jersey, patented a system that identifies gun users by the way they squeeze the grip. (The company they partnered with, MetalStorm, has had cash flow problems for years and the project seems to be stalled.) Other methods using radiofrequency idenfication have been suggested, using anything from jewelry to implanted RFID chips. Hong Kong researchers once suggested using the patterns on the tongue as a reliable way to identify a gun user.

For now, biometrics are usually reserved for gun safes, which use fingerprints to enable the case to be opened.

Rapid-Fire Cyberattacks

Bond's foe in Skyfall is an expert in cyberattacks. And like many movies that include hacking threats, this one depicts its villain as having nearly unlimited power with a computer. For example, he can make individual rooms explode by releasing gas from a pipeline.

Cyber threats are very real, and infrastructure is vulnerable. Pipelines and other sprawling systems have many remote, unmanned substations. Many facilities have wireless access points that could allow attackers to log in from a distance. These are at risk for shutdowns and dangerous pressure buildups. But those systems would not deliver a gas rupture to a specific room in a building.

That means a hacker would have to have control over the software that runs a building. My colleague Glenn Derene, PM's Senior Tech Editor, has an axiom about cyberattacks: "What they can achieve is limited by what a system is designed to do." That is, the attack can only be as bad as the worst thing a system is designed for. For example, the Stuxnet virus disabled Iranian nuclear facilities by ordering centrifuges to spin fast enough to break, ignoring any safeguards. The system was doing what it was designed to do—spin—but breaking it was a matter of degree. What kind of building system would include ways to release gas or over-pressurize lines lines to cause an explosion? Only in the Bond universe.

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